


Fortune Given By Gods

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ancient History, Chariots, Disputes Over Cattle Ownership, M/M, Politics, Polyamory, warfare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-25 03:32:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10755852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: Kallinikos lies injured at home while his king fights what may be his last battle.





	Fortune Given By Gods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cadmean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadmean/gifts).



> I hope my recipient enjoys the piece! Notes about worldbuilding decisions at the end.
> 
> Warnings: violence to animals and people on the battlefield; less than palatable attitudes towards some subjects in keeping with the general time period.

In general, the people of Delilkis pledge ourselves to two partners, and while conflict comes inevitably to some it is considered dishonorable to dissolve these pledges more than a few times in a lifetime. We have our wives, who bear our children, join with us legally to form a household, and run the various matters which the gods have entrusted particularly to women. We also have our companions, most typically men, who are with us in public life. Accordingly, our wives have their own companions among each other, and so we are able to balance the requirements of fertility and companionship for all.

At least, that was the theory taught to me as a child by my tutors. I suppose it works well enough for many of the men I know.

As it happens, I am not fond of women in that particular way. Fortunately, the gods intervened in my favor. When I was thirty years old or so, my mother having grown old and my father dead, a distant cousin came to my household. She had been orphaned by warfare between our sister city Ionos and its enemies, and she asked for shelter with me.

It became apparent that she was no more interested in men than I was in woman, and so we became the solution to each other's particular problems. She is the woman of my house, and I have adopted her as my sister to quiet the gossip. There was a bit of scandal over it when it became obvious I wasn't intending to marry her, but people get over themselves. As the king says, minor domestic matters at least keep people entertained in the summer when there is less work to be done in the fields.

I think that when he said it I grumbled something about how he, Theodotos, could provide the next year's entertainment for them in that case. However, I knew perfectly well he was right. Better that the topic of gossip in the market be the household life of the king's general – me, Kallinikos – than dissent over the taxation of grain or whisperings about slave revolt.

In the meantime, Nikomache – my new sister – and I became accustomed to each other.

There might have been concern about heirs or some such issue if I had been in the typical situation of a Delilkan man, with a few dozen dependent cousins and slaves, plus a substantial plantation to work and a glorious paternal line to maintain. However, the circumstances were again favorable for us, if not so at first glance.

My mother had had difficulty bearing children. As a result, myself and one sister ten years my senior were the only survivors, and my sister had long ago been married away. My father's long illness had withered the number of other, non-familial dependents who might have had some right to assurance about the inheritance. Slaves had been sold or freed and laborers released from their debts as he was unable to manage the complexities of the harvest or afford to support them without it, and much of my land lay fallow when I inherited.

The remainder of my family was in Ionos; close enough that the legal disposal of the property would not be in question after my death, but far enough that they couldn't complain about my behavior.

Indeed, I suspected my sister had come to me to avoid the charity of our family more than to seek mine, since in Ionos she would have been either reduced to a serving girl or married to any cousin of the appropriate age who would have her. Here, she was the only adult woman of the family apart from my elderly mother. She could arrange the weaving workshop and the women's rites to her satisfaction. If I was not in such a prosperous position that summer when she first came, my father's last rites conducted barely half the year before, the next harvest was a better one. After that I could afford attendants for her, so that she didn't have to run the half of the household labor that belonged to her by right alone.

The people of the city saw that my fields and orchards flourished; they saw that my sister's weaving was skillful and her rituals performed exactly correctly. The talk stopped by the time the olives were harvested in the winter. The slaves, clients and hired laborers we acquired in the following years came into a household already established and saw the matter of Nikomache and I as a fact of life.

I suppose that brings me to Theodotos. The king.

They often say that we were as brothers as children, that we were friends from the first time we met, but this isn't true. It strikes me as an awkward thing to take a near-brother into your bed; I can't imagine we would be what we are to each other if that was the case. Naturally we knew of each other and could recognize each other, there being only so many boys of the aristocracy in our age group.

The murder of his parents by his uncle -- the affair that led to his coronation at such a young age -- had also led to some fascination around his person, even more than is usually the case with kings. It is still said by those with a taste for drama that the young Theodotos, coming in on his uncle just after his father's throat was cut, seized the knife on his belt and leapt upon the man, given supernatural strength by horror.

I have no idea if this is true; Theodotos does not enjoy discussing the subject. But it lent him the status of a hero and may have been the reason that the crown was not disposed of among the prominent families of Delilkis.

Therefore, I suppose I would have said I was in awe of him if you had asked me at the time. Nearly any boy would have.

However, I don't think we actually spoke directly until I was in my nineteenth year, and Theodotos in his seventeenth. The games were hosted in our city that summer – I mean, there are always games in every city every summer; but it was our turn to hold the tournament between the eight cities. It was the first time since Theodotos was crowned at the age of twelve, and as a result an even greater crowd than usual had shown up. People came from much farther away than usual to see the boy king, whose parents' tragedy had already become the work of singers.

I was competing that year in the chariot race, and I still recall the glow of his face as I knelt before him to receive the blessing of my king. I remember that for an instant I believed I saw the twin gods he carried in that moment – Kas, of warfare and competition; and the spirit of Delilkis itself – and felt them smiling on me with him.

I remember also that I was wildly attracted to him and terrified that I would embarrass myself publicly; athletes in the games of the eight cities are not what you would call modestly garbed.

He later confessed to me that he spent the entire day nearly faint from terror, knowing that there were representatives from everywhere from Ionos to the island of Knedia. Even the smallest error would have provided ammunition for years to come for those who thought he was too young to rule, and that might in turn inspire our neighbors to take that rule from him by force.

I can't say that I noticed his terror at the time.

Our athletes dominated that day, spurred by our pride in our king and our offense at the insults given to him and, through him, to us. I won the chariot race and terrorized my mother by it, who told me for some weeks after that she had no desire to lose her only son for the pursuit of glory in a sporting event of all things. (Being nineteen and tactless, I told her at great length that I would have been happy to lose my life for the glory of the gods. I know better, now; a life is a precious thing to waste for the sake of competition.)

Still, I don't regret that race. Our performance put to rest the talk of our weakness, and with it, a threat of invasion I was barely aware of at that time.

And Theodotos came to me after.

He told me a host of things I could scarcely believe at the time; that he was impressed by my strength, thrilled by my bravery. That he wished he could compete in such an event, and sometimes hated the restrictions put upon him by the fact that he was the only living member of the line of Delilkan kings, and could not take any serious unnecessary risk before he had at least a living child. That he envied me, and admired me, in short.

I had already been attracted to him, felt divinity in his blessing. I told him with passion of my own difficulties – my mother's perpetual weakness and my father's fear that she would die in childbirth; more paltry, adolescent things that I no longer recall in any great detail – and we spent the night talking, at last, of the philosophies our respective tutors had imparted us with.

It was an adolescent love that we fell wildly into at that time, but it has held true nonetheless.

When his adviser turned out to be in the pay of Tkum and tried to kill him several years later, I was there, and I fought for my lover as well as my king. After that, we pledged to each other. It seemed unnecessary to wait any longer, though neither of us was really of an age to make that kind of decision, being respectively twenty-two and barely twenty. We had both been faced with difficult decisions and hardship already, and neither of us has, I believe, regretted that pledge since.

He married the niece of a king of another city of the eight – Sanafi – several years later, having put it off longer than was reasonable under the circumstances. I believe he did so out of the reluctance that comes over him sometimes. He has experienced many betrayals in his life, and a wife would by necessity be close to him; would live in his household, sleep near him, handle his food.

I haven't spoken much to his wife, Demetria, as is proper. However, Nikomache informs me that she is intelligent and virtuous, a good match in her opinion for Theodotos as I have described him to her. Likewise, Theodotos praises her willingness to discuss matters of governance and tell him when she thinks he is being an idiot.

I occasionally wish we could consult each other more directly, because it might be easier to make Theodotos see reason on those occasions he is unwilling to hear advice. I have on two occasions resorted to sending Nikomache to the queen under the pretense of wanting to consult her expertise with gold thread in order to communicate information to Demetria. Both were ultimately successful, but perhaps overly convoluted.

I am dwelling on the two of them – Nikomache and Theodotos – and I know it. They are the most precious people in my life. My king and companion, and my sister.

I may lose them both tonight.

The trouble started about five years ago, between us and Nolarida. Nolarida is a city near us and of similar customs, but not one of the eight. It is a young city, but a populous one and rich; its position on the coast is good for trading, and its harbor is apparently excellently shaped for shelter in storms. I am not a sailor and Delilkis is not a city that fights naval wars, and so I have little knowledge of this but what I have been told.

Nevertheless it is undeniably a fact that Nolarida is rich, rich beyond reason for such a young city, and that they have spurned the offer several generations before to join our eight and become a group of nine cities. We would then have been nine cities with peace treaties symbolized by the games and by our mutual rites; nine cities whose royalty and aristocracy give daughters to each other in marriage; nine cities who are sworn to defend each other.

It did not happen, and so we are eight and not nine, and so Nolarida continues to alarm the eight.

Despite that, we have had a more or less peaceful existence since before my grandfather's time, assisted by the treaties between the eight, the intermarriages, and the yearly games.

There are always feuds between families; someone's ruffian son steals cattle from someone else, a daughter runs away with the cousin of that someone and he's accused of abduction, that kind of thing. A few generations and a few more incidents and the families will swear themselves eternal enemies. There might be a few fights in the marketplace over it, and if the young men in question are exceptionally brave or stupid – as young men are known to be – someone is occasionally stabbed. However, it typically doesn't go further than that unless the feud grows very bitter, and the families involved are very wealthy.

It was one such feud that created the trouble between Nolarida and Delilkis. The feud itself was an old thing, dating from the time of our great-grandfathers, and had grown bitter and intractable as only an ancient feud can. The story of its beginning is lost, but the singers will have it that it involved a particularly beautiful woman, as they usually do.

The matter five years ago certainly did not begin with women, but rather with a dispute over the ownership of cattle. A bull went loose and fathered twin calves on a neighbors' herd, and the owner of the bull claimed that he should have some right to the issue. This is absurd, and contrary to the established law of the Delilkis beside – how could paternity of a calf be established? Paternity of humans causes enough legal difficulties.

Unfortunately, as it happens, the law of Nolarida differs in cases where paternity can be proven. More unfortunately still, the bull had an unusual pattern which was duplicated on one of the calves, and the man who owned the bull was a citizen of Nolarida resident in Delilkis.

A dispute resulted. Eventually the elders of Nolarida were summoned, and evidently greatly enjoyed the excuse to visit a far away city in force. The agreement reached was that the man would be permitted to purchase the calf with the pattern of his bull for a certain sum, less than market price but reasonable enough. Peace could then be established between the families, and as there was a second calf still for the owner of the cow, everyone could be content.

It is likely that everyone _would_ have been content, had the families not been the heirs to another feud between them, and had the calf left with with the Delilkan family not grown to be a sterile cow.

This is the point where a woman becomes involved, and therefore it is the part that has been carried up and down the city and to the others of the eight. After all, it is difficult to make a dispute over the ownership of a pair of twin cows into an epic. Not so, injury to a woman.

The woman in question was Delilkan; her name was Kallis, and she was as beautiful as her name implies. Often enough, this is merely a detail embroidered upon by singers, but in this case I can attest that it was true. Her mother was a merchant woman from Tkum, and Kallis had the same smooth, dark skin and luminous black eyes. Every feature was formed perfectly, as though the goddess of love, Aeschia, had personally had a hand in her creation.

I know these things, despite the custom of our people that women wear veils when they are not protected in their homes, because Kallis was not precisely a woman. Her mother bore no sons, and she showed an inclination for horseback riding, and wrestling, and even mathematics as a child. Therefore, it was the decision of her parents to raise her in the clothing of a boy and legally make her her father's heir.

It is said in the city that such women are the chosen of Glyste, the virgin goddess of the wilderness and the hunt. Glyste protects all women, who after all are more creatures of the wilderness than civilization, but loves in particular those most like her. As it happens, Nolarida does not have this custom, as we all discovered soon after Kallis became involved in the affair; another seemingly minor fact that turned out to be very unfortunate for us all.

In addition to being beautiful, an excellent horsewoman, and the best shot in the city, Kallis was the daughter of the owner of the cow that started the dispute. When it was discovered that the calf they were left with was sterile, she became greatly insulted, as any man of Delilkis would. Her father – an old enough man to have learned patience – counseled her to wait, that the insult had most likely not been intentional, but she would not. She became convinced that the owner of the bull had known – that perhaps his bull was known to throw sterile cows, or he might even have cast a curse to make their cow so, hating their family as he did.

It is said that she paced through the night, demanding to know what she might do for her honor and that of her family, muttering wildly and speaking to the gods; and that when the first light of dawn rose, she was given an answer. It is said that at the first light of the sun, she went immediately to her horse and mounted, and went off to repair the insult.

I am not sure how anyone could know these things. It might be that the singers have it from her parents or sisters, but I think most likely it is poetic embroidery. The first any of us knew of it, after all, was that Kallis was dead in Nolarida.

Of course that was not something the city could ignore. Kallis was a young citizen, beautiful and renown for her performance in the games. Further, the chosen women of Glyste are among the most respected in Delilkis, as much as the elders or the generals, though not quite as much as the king. The elders convened to find out the truth of the matter.

Further, Kallis' mother, the wife of Mikros, tore off her veil in grief and lamented in the center of the city for days. She alternatively screamed for her daughter and called upon each of the men who walked by to avenge her; asking how they could plant or buy cloth or go about their business when a youth of the city had been murdered in Nolarida, by barbarians. The wife of Mikros had always been considered to be particularly skilled and sophisticated, being from Tkum, and so this created even more of a stir than might be imagined.

Theodotos knew that he had to do something about the affair, and so did I. He asked me to coordinate an attack. I bid him to wait one more day, until the man in our pay in Nolarida – a cousin of mine – returned with news of what had happened that Kallis had been killed.

He came, finally, and told us that there had been a fight, that she had been stabbed by a man who fit the description of the bull's owner, and that the man was in the custody of the elders.

Consequently I bade Theodotos to gather the army of citizens. We rode in force to Nolarida, leaving behind just enough soldiers to protect those who could not fight, and surrounded the city's gate. Upon our challenge by a somewhat frightened watchman – the city of Nolarida having primarily a naval army, and rather fewer chariots – Theodotos spoke as I had advised him.

He said that we had come to seek the murderer of Kallis, a free citizen of Delilkis and chosen woman of Glyste. He continued that we had heard he was being held in Nolarida, and the insult between us would be repaired and our relations restored if he was turned over to us immediately.

The elders were gathered before us shortly, and the matter negotiated. It was apparent that they had no desire either to execute the man for murder as required by the city's laws – as he had a rich and powerful family – or to let him go and court war with the eight cities. They were very amenable indeed to giving him up as a hostage and avoiding the decision of what to do with him. I believe all would have been well, were it not for two matters: the unfamiliarity of the people of Nolarida with the custom of Glyste's chosen women, and the fact that Kallis' older cousin was in the army, in a place of honor for the vengeance he sought for his cousin, next to me and the king.

The elders had about finished their debate, concluding that the honor of the murdered woman's family must take precedence over local jurisdiction, when one man among them who was previously silent spoke up. I discovered later that he was a brother to the imprisoned man, and had likely been silent for this reason; the city of Nolarida forbids elders from voting on manners directly pertaining to their family members, and he was there only as an observer.

Perhaps he spoke out of maliciousness, hoping to provoke a war that would prevent the elders from handing over his brother. Perhaps he spoke out of carelessness, consumed by his grief and not thinking of the consequences of his actions. At any rate, I do not care to repeat the precise words, but the gist of it was that he saw no reason to punish the man for the murder of a woman who must be without virtue. What good woman would ride to another city by herself, astride a horse and clad like a man without a veil?

The cousin of Kallis in the crowd was as enraged by this as could be expected. Kallis was not only a representative of his family and a murdered woman in need of vengeance, but a girl some six years his junior. She was more a sister to him than a cousin; she had listened worshipfully to his stories of battle and been indulged with candies by him; she had been taught the rudiments of wrestling by him, in fact.

Already half-mad with grief, he couldn't bear to hear his cousin's honor impugned, but immediately leapt on the man, drawing his knife. Theodotos and I lunged forward to drag him off, having more experience of what might result, but it was too late; the man was severely injured, and died that evening.

Well, that was the end of the peaceful resolution. The elders of Nolarida were sacred in their city, as much as ours are in Delilkis. We had come with chariots, threatened the city and one of its foremost families, and murdered an elder. The first battle between Delilkis and Nolarida was that day.

We have been at war with Nolarida these past two years. At the end of the last summer, when it was time for soldiers to return to their fields, the first efforts were made to make an arrangement for peace. The omens were not favorable, and the gods did not allow agreement between us. The best that Theodotos could negotiate was an agreement that we would know freedom from attack for the coming months – time during which both Delilkis and Nolarida required all able adults at home, working the fields, so that our children would not starve.

So it was, and so when this summer began, the war began again with it. But summer is drawing to a close, and the Delilkan people are frustrated with our continuing inability to achieve a real victory, for Nolarida has prevailed upon their trading ally, Tkum, to send them chariots. Consequently we are at a stalemate even with aid from the others of the eight cities.

Kallis' parents are distraught by this, of course. I gather that Kallis' father Mikros went to the ambassador of Tkum and prevailed upon him, if not to aid Delilkis, to at least refrain from involving Tkum in the dispute. After all, Nolarida had provoked our assault by enabling the murder of a daughter of a woman of Tkum.

This might seem like an unlikely cause, but unlike our custom, Tkum regards women as its true citizens. Its citizenship is passed through the maternal line. Consequently, Kallis was a citizen of Tkum for all she had never seen that country, and the ambassador of Tkum should have been responsible for her safety as much as Theodotos.

I gather that the ambassador of Tkum did not see it this way, when Nolarida is a great source of valuable dye, and fish, and a port city in the trade of bronze.

I am dwelling again.

Feuds are all well and good when over a just cause – for how could our city be defended if we were not known to protect ourselves and our families? A little war provides glory for our youth and our city, captives and loot for our king and nobles, and subject matter for the singers for generations to come.

But a war should end at the end of the season of war, much as even the best harvest only lasts one year, and this war has grown too big for a little glory and a few captives. The involvement of Tkum worries Theodotos, and I as well. The involvement of the eight, I know, worries Nolarida.

Too, there is talk that Nolarida does not wish to sue for peace for the autumn. If our people cannot tend the crops for the growing season, we will be in a bad state. Nolarida may not be as incapacitated. Nolarida has its outlying farms and the plantations of the nobility as any city, but its heart is the port. And while merchants may hesitate to come over land to a city under attack by raiders, Delilkis has no navy and no capacity to blockade a port.

If we lose, tonight, and Delilkis maintains sovereignty and an army with which to continue the war, I will go to the city of Ionos. It is the city where my sister comes from and the remainder of my cousins reside. I will prostrate myself before the elders and beg for the aid of their ships as well as their chariots.

Ionos is a port city; it doesn't have a large fleet, but what it does have would be greater when combined with the port city of Loknos, another of the eight. If that is not a great enough number of ships to blockade Nolarida and force them to sue for peace, I will pay a merchant of Ionos or Loknos to take me to Tkum under a merchant's sail, and I will find the kin of Kallis and her mother – I have heard that her mother's cousin is a general there – and beg them to ensure we are aided.

If we lose tonight, it will not matter, because my lover and king, and my sister and cousin, will both be dead.

Let me explain why I am not with them; it will not stay my grief, but it may salvage my honor, and that is all I will have left.

The last battle we had was glorious, and had we fought Nolarida on their own terms, had they only possessed their own chariots and soldiers, Delilkis would be victorious. Ionos and Delilkis would have raided the city itself, taken captives and loot there, and the war would be over.

I fought at the side of Theodotos, as I have since we were barely more than children. I cannot describe what it is to fight from a chariot, only give glimpses. The wooden platform heaved beneath me, and I kept my feet only through the experience of decades. The horses strained forward, heedless of the spears flying around them or the shouts of war. I imagine them to be aware only of the ground beneath their feet and the bits in their mouths, drawn by my chariot driver to steer them. It is like flying; it is like godhood. At any moment, a wheel may come off, a horse may shy or stumble, the platform may overturn and you may die, and you know this – but you are nevertheless there, and you are not dead.

My heart raced, and my body strained for balance, but I was hardly aware of it at the time. My mind and heart were where they always are in battle – with my people, around me, and with my king.

There is very little communication in the midst of battle. All must know the basics of the plan beforehand, for there is rarely opportunity to find messengers or a decent outcropping on which to shout. Consequently, while before battle I am concerned primarily with planning – the route we must take, the number of chariots in good repair and battle horses currently sound, the advantages of the terrain and time of day; all those details which are not glorious and therefore fall not to the king but to me – once the signal is given, and we charge, much of the weight of command is gone from me.

We go out, and we ride, and we fight; and if we are lucky, we come back. The gods are with us, or they are with our enemies. There is very little more to say about that. You accept it, or you cannot, and if not you do not remain a soldier long.

I have never had difficulty accepting it until tonight, when I am not on the battlefield, and I have no horses charging forward as though on wings, and I have no weapon in hand to defend my king.

But I am speaking of that night some weeks before now, the reason why I am here. We were charging down the enemy ranks, and had broken them utterly. Ionos' chariots added to our own created a great force, and Nolarida is accustomed to fighting mainly with infantry when they do not fight in the sea. Our warriors were at the point of leaping off their chariots to fight from the ground, and many of the chariot drivers had retreated to allow us a place of safety to return to, or a second pass against the enemy if they should form ranks again.

Theodotos had dismounted, but I had not; I signaled to my driver to take a wide pass, scattering the Nolaridan soldiers so that I could see the field and decide whether to send a messenger to the general of Ionos.

This is why I was in the position I was, when I saw the chariots of Tkum bearing down on the battle, against our own, now unmounted forces. And one, in particular, bearing down on Theodotos.

It took me an instant to process it, but my driver knew my mind as well as I do, and had already turned our team, racing back towards them. I knew that stopping a charging chariot was nearly impossible, and killing the driver would do little good, now that the horses were set in their charge.

I took my spear in my hands, and leaned forward. Our horses charged faster, as though they sensed my urgency for my lover, and the driver's for his king. We came into range just in time. I lunged forward and threw my spear instead of wielding it on the ground, as it was meant to be used. Fortune was with me; the spear flew truly, into the throat of the closest horse.

I believe it was dead before it began to fall; the cut made when slaughtering a horse is very similar, and chosen so that they die quickly and without pain. Its team mate was still charging, almost unaware of what had happened, but abruptly it was pulling not only the weight of a chariot, but also the dead weight of the second horse, and badly balanced besides. It swerved, trying to compensate.

That was enough. The balance of the chariot was destroyed; the platform heaved one, final time, falling almost perpendicular to the ground. I saw the warrior's neck break as she hit the ground; the chariot driver was trapped beneath the fallen horse.

The remaining horse survived the crash, miraculously uninjured. It began to understand the situation – that it remained tethered to its dead teammate by twisted traces, in the middle of a battle zone. It struggled against the harness and screamed piteously.

The foreign chariot forces had themselves mostly dismounted, and the battle around us was that of infantry, clashing one on one in small struggles. Theodotos was approaching us, having realized the danger he was in just as it passed.

I jumped from the chariot, then, and caught his forearm as I reached him. Had we been home, and safe, there were things I might have said – how much I loved him, how distraught I would be if he were killed – but it was not the right time. We might still die at any moment.

“You've saved me again,” he said, clasping my hand quickly, “--You and Philippos,” he said, naming my driver. “For fuck's sake, would someone shut up that horse--”

I had my knife already out, and gestured with it ruefully, approaching the horse. It might have been a very difficult task had the horse been of a different temperament, but when I caught its bridle, it calmed quickly instead of biting or thrashing harder. It was not a wild-tempered horse, but one that trusted that humans were there to help, one trained, I speculate, by kind owners. It took me only a moment to cut the traces to free it and reclaim my spear from its dead teammate.

“Get it out alive and you'll keep that one,” Theodotos said, watching me with one eye even as he guarded my back. “Must have been as good a trainer as a driver,” he said with mild disgust, gesturing to the half-crushed charioteer.

I gestured assent and went to remount my chariot; the battle had drawn away from us in the few moments we were there, and I would catch up faster than on foot.

That was the moment when it happened. It shouldn't have; I should have paid more attention, or Theodotos should have. Both of us knew better, but the near miss had made us both wild with fear and then giddy with relief, not planning properly – as though we didn't both have decades of experience.

The second chariot had an archer on it. Just as I turned my head in the process of swinging back up to my chariot, I saw her arm move, drawing the bow.

There was no question that she was aiming at Theodotos, not me. Theodotos had the purple cape of royalty, the shining armor he was known to wear, all of the symbols of rank. His loss would devastate Delilkis; his oldest son was too young to rule, as he had been when his own parents were killed.

I jumped from the chariot a second time, thinking only to knock him down before the arrow flew, or at least to be in the way.

As it happened, I managed both. We hit the ground, and the arrow hit me in the back, implanting only a few inches from where it might have impaled my kidney and killed me, or my spine.

The archer must have drawn again – I didn't see, was incapable of thinking that far ahead through the all-consuming pain, but Theodotos shouted and shoved me off of him. I heard the scrape of his sword pulled from its scabbard, but the rough handling whited out my vision, made it impossible to think.

The rest of the battle is a handful of images, sounds, sensations; a charge of hoof beats, the twang of an arrow. The smell of my own blood. Theodotos' voice, soft, and his hand on my face; voices, over my head, and the sensation of being lifted – agony again – to horseback, before I passed out.

We lost the ground, our forces retreating with the serious injury of their general and their king's retreat, but we inflicted great losses on the forces of Nolarida and their reinforcements from Tkum. It was my advice to the king that we strike back and attempt to retake the land quickly, before Nolarida had time to receive new reinforcements across Tkum from the sea. We would have won if we had not retreated, and we could still win; if we took the city, Tkum's reinforcements would be fruitless, and the empire would not fight to free their ally if the conquerors of that trade city were willing to continue its contracts.

And so, today, Theodotos rode out with the army, all of the chariots and infantry of Delilkis, and the forces allied to us from Ionos and Sanafi. I remained as I am now, lying on a pallet in my house as an invalid, unable to defend him.

I knew it would bother me, but I believed that it was for the best that Delilkis strike back before Nolarida had time to recover. I believed that we would have an easy victory, for our scouts reported that Nolarida has lost so many men it can only man half its wall, and we recovered many horses and chariots from the battlefield.

It would have been the case, if Nolarida had not turned to treachery.

Just two hours past, there was a commotion in the entrance to my property, and I sent a servant to find out what the noise was about. He delivered up to me the source of it, knowing I would want to hear the message, once he had heard it.

The messenger was a man of Nolarida, but also a distant cousin of mine, on the maternal line that leaves familial feeling without rights of property. He came to us shouting a great deal and pacing, half-mad with anger and insult, but the story we received from him was this:

The watch of Nolarida is indeed unarmed, and the chariot army sorely reduced, and the infantry largely wounded. This is not a trap, but true weakness. And Nolarida knows that Theodotos will ride out against them, for they have refused to sue for peace or accept it this last season and the one before it; they have earned no mercy now.

They could surrender. They know they could surrender. Theodotos is an honorable man – this conflict would not have begun otherwise – and would not carry off the free women of Nolarida or burn their fields and starve their children, should they acknowledge their defeat and ask for an honest peace.

Instead, they dishonor themselves. They have sent a scout in tunics in the style of Sanafi, a sister city, to come through our city's gates as a guest, and eat in the household of the king as messenger. They have sent him to find one of the king's grooms and pay him to disable his chariot before the next battle between Delilkis and Nolarida.

A single, small upset in a chariot in battle will kill its passengers. They are as delicate as they are destructive; their balance is fragile. What will hold together at the pace of travel will crumble in an instant at the first charge.

I do not know if this man speaks the truth; how can I? It may be that this is another trick, but there was little I could do, either way. Theodotos was already an hour gone, and I in no shape to ride, and I could not send the servants of my household – my steward elderly, my cook half-blind, and most of the rest young girls – into a battlefield. The laborers in the fields would take time to locate, and be too exhausted for a hard ride, besides.

I was saying this to myself, angry, and more agitated that I could not rise from my bed and pace, when Nikomache entered the room.

We are often taken for siblings raised together by those who meet us now, and the reason for this is that at times we seem to know each other's thoughts. Nikomache must have heard the message from the steward. She said, without a word from me on the subject, “If you go, and you fall off your horse or become ill halfway through the journey, Theodotos will never hear the message and will certainly die.”

“If the message is true,” I said.

A simple inspection of the chariot would reveal the truth of it, as long as the messenger arrived in time. The problem might be fixable in the field, or if not, any man would willingly give his king his place on a working chariot. The battle would proceed as I had planned it.

“What choice do you have but to believe it?” Nikomache said. “And what use is there for Nolarida in lying? Better to send the messenger before the battle, make the king antagonize his grooms interrogating them and cause treachery himself. Perhaps he is only here to see what reinforcements Delilkis holds back, but in any case, we have no way of knowing it.”

Nikomache is an intelligent woman, and I am generally grateful for this, but tonight, less so.

“What else do you suggest?” I said. “It will take time to send for another messenger of ours, time to ride to the city and seek out a friend, and determine who should go and on what horse.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Nikomache said. “They are more than halfway there already unless Theodotos' horse went lame. I will go, and I will take your gray mare. She's eager for battle anyway, she doesn't understand why her comrades have left her behind.”

The gray mare is my prize warhorse, and I have never found a match quite worthy of her. She was undoubtedly the best choice; I would have taken her, had I gone.

I was less sure of Nikomache.

She saw I was about to refuse her, and she pressed her case before I had a chance. “I am of this city every bit as much as you are, now. Theodotos is my king, not only yours. And if Nolarida kills our king and overruns us, I will lose as much as you – if not more, because I am carried off as some man's captive. You know I am a good rider, and I am uninjured and rested.”

I did not speak again. I knew she was right, but to condone it would have been too much. I lowered my head and lifted a hand, and she knew that I would not argue.

“Tell the steward to get the gray mare ready, then,” I said when I could speak, and Nikomache went from me.

She is courageous, and loyal, and she among the best riders in the city, and she is intelligent enough to know what must be done. I have admired these qualities in her as I have in any man, before.

Now I wish they were not so. I could bear Theodotos' death in battle. I could stand it if Nikomache were to become ill and die. But to lose both of them, on the same night? And all of it because of a series of events I could have stopped? If I had been fast enough to stop the cousin of Kallis from assaulting an elder of Nolarida – if I had not become distracted and been injured in the last battle--

Fortune favors who she will. It is as the gods make it.

Now, I lie in the dusk and wait, wondering why no one has come back to me, wondering if anyone will.

In battle, once the chariot charges, you fly forward without time to reconsider. You leave the world behind; you can take no action but the one in front of you, think of nothing but the battle at hand.

Left behind, worrying at things I can do nothing about seems to be _all_ I can do.

But now there are voices outside the house.

I struggle to sit up, my hand braced on the wall. This may be my king's messenger, or it may be that Nolarida comes to overrun us, our king gone and with him our soldiers' wills. Either way, I want to see them with my own eyes, face the truth of it standing.

“You should sit,” the serving girl in the corner says, alarmed. She is, I believe, Nikomache's favorite, I think her name is Glykera. She moved her weaving into the room after Nikomache left. Probably at a command from her mistress to stop me if I got an idea about going after her.

“Help me to the window,” I command her.

She bites her lip – wondering if Nikomache will reprimand her, no doubt – but when I continue trying to rise, she comes.

She is a tall girl, and strong; I put an arm over her shoulder and we rise, together. I have to lean only a little on her to get to the window, now that I am standing.

I look out. My laughter strains the wound, and pain shoots through me – but I barely think of it.

I can see the approach to the city gates from this window; the orchards and fields of Delilkis spread out before me on the hills. I can see the road approaching the city from the east.

I can see the procession of chariots, our soldiers, the captured banners of Nolarida and the captives herded with them.

And in front, I can see Theodotos, his helm gleaming distinctively even from this distance – and next to him a veiled figure, the same saffron-dyed wrap I saw her leave in this afternoon.

Nikomache, my sister, at last given the chance to live up to her name – victorious in battle!

Theodotos is saved; and if Nikomache rides with him, the message we were brought must have been true. Fortune favors who she will, and tonight, it is us.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is set in a secondary world, not in any specific historical period. That said, I think of Delilkis, Nolarida, etc as being Not!Greek, and Tkum as Not!Egypt, and this is probably some point in the Bronze Age, don't ask me when. The worldbuilding is rather mashed up, with the legal and economic systems and certain aspects of culture definitely based off of ancient Greece, but the specifics are not representative of any real Greek city state that I'm aware of. 
> 
> Please forgive me for possibly too much realism about ancient warfare. Yes, cattle ownership is _that_ important when that's most of your property; yes, this sounds ridiculous to many modern readers.
> 
> The title is based off of Theodotos' name, which means "given by God" or "given by gods."


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